CuRRICULUM PLANNING

A Handbook for Professionals

David Pratt Queen's University

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Pratt, D. (1994). Curriculum perspectives. In Curriculum planning: A handbook for professionals, (pp. 8–

22). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

_ ~- ~ 1 ... u ...... u a.u;,ence.

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES

Surprisingly, few curriculum theorists have discussed curriculum directly in terms of well-being and happiness. More commonly, curriculum is viewed as a ve­hicle for helping people construct meaning in their lives. This is salutary. Human beings are, first and foremost, meaning-makers, and a sense of meaning is a criti­cal component in human happiness.

We will not attempt here a comprehensive survey of educational or curriculum philosophies. Each such philosophy has its distinct value commitments and its own view of the kinds of learning that are most meaningful. Almost all philosophies of curriculum agree (sometimes implicitly rather than explicitly) that the basis of edu­cation is helping learners to construct meaning in their lives. Where they disagree is with respect to the kinds of meaning that deserve priority.

Curriculum theorists have written diversely and at length about the classifi­cation of different schools of curriculum thought. Eisner & Vallance (1973) clas­sified five "conflicting conceptions" of curriculum: technological, cognitive, self-actualizing, social-reconstructionist, and academic-rationalist. Schubert ( 1986a) defined three distinct schools: intellectual/traditionalist, social/behav­iorist, and experientialist. Miller and Seller (1985) categorized curriculum mod­els in terms of transmission, transaction, and transformation. The field. of

Curriculum Perspectives • 9

curriculum theory is a creative cacophany. Twenty years ago the late great Joseph Schwab declared the curriculum field moribund (1970). In a recent and master­ful description of the field of curriculum, Philip Jackson epitomized it as con­fused (1992). This at least suggests some progress over two decades. Clearly any summary of so diverse a field will be selective. Let us, by way of example, limit our examination to four orientations:

1. Cultural transmission, which emphasizes the traditional academic disciplines;

2. Social transformation, emphasizing political and social change;

3. Individual fulfillment, emphasizing personal growth, relationships, and self-actualization;

4. Feminist pedagogy, emphasizing a more equitable balance among gender-related characteristics and interests.

These categories are neither exclusive nor exhaustive. They represent differences in focus, and there are strong interconnections among all of them. They will serve, however, to illustrate the range of outlook that different curriculum schol­ars bring to their subject.

• Cultural Transmission •

This strand of curriculum thinking has the longest pedigree, going back at least two thousand years. It views the role of curriculum, and of schools in general, as to transmit the best products of the intellectual culture. It is often associated with a belief in the generalizability oflearning-that learning in one area will have beneficial effects in many areas. Plato, for example, maintained that training in mathematics "makes a slow mind quicker, even if it does no other good" (1941, p. 237). The school of cultural transmission tends to see curriculum in terms of a specific, and fairly limited, number of intellectual disciplines. The areas of learning most valued are those that tend toward abstraction and generalizability. Medieval scholars, treading in the footsteps of Plato, viewed education as consisting of the Quadrivium of four minor disciplines-Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astron­omy-and the Trivium of three major disciplines-Grammar, Rhetoric, and Di­alectic-which together constituted the seven liberal arts.

Society constantly redefines the disciplines of importance. In the United States in 1885, the "Committee of Fifteen," under the leadership of William T. Harris, identified the five basic fields of knowledge, or "windows on the soul," as mathematics, biology, art and literature, grammar, and history. More recently, na­tional reports in the United States, most notably The Paideia Proposal by Mortimer Adler (1982) and Horace's Compromise by Theodore Sizer (1984), have revived the demand that schools concentrate on cultural transmission by means of the traditional academic disciplines.

10 • 1/ Curriculum and Human Well;Being

Deja vu ~ .

What is more, even Grammar, the basis of all education, baffles the brains of the younger generation today. For if you take note, there is not a single modern schoolboy who can compose verses or write a decent letter. l doubt too whether one in a hundred can read a Latin author, or decipher a word of any foreign language. And no wonder, for at every level of our educational system, you'll find Humbug in charge, and his colleague Flattery tagging along behind him.

William Langland, Piers the Plowman, A.D. 1362 (1966, p. 190)

• •

Because of its heavy reliance on cognition-that is, know ledge and intellectual skills-the kind of content advocated by these thinkers is relatively easy to teach and to test. Perhaps for that reason it has come to dominate school curriculum. The objectives stated in official curriculum guidelines focus almost exclusively on cogni­tion (Klein, 1989; Pratt, 1989). Advocates of cultural transmission have sometimes claimed that cognition constitutes the only legitimate curriculum content (Hirst, 1970; Phenix, 1986 ).

Those who view cultural transmission as the primary purpose of the school have a number of beliefs in common: ( 1) that the role of the curriculum is pri­marily intellectual; (2) that all or most of what is intellectually significant is to be found in the traditional academic disciplines; (3) that the sources of educa­tion are essentially literary, to be found in words and symbols; ( 4) that the task of schools is to repair deficits or gaps in people's understanding; (5) that educa­tion is a didactic process whereby information is transmitted to the student by means of the spoken or written word; and (6) that particular studies will have general effects.

Few educators would deny the importance of teaching knowledge and intel­lectual skills. Many such learnings are critical to the well-being and successful functioning of human beings in society. Critics tend to attack not the idea that such learnings are necessary, but the idea that they are sufficient; that the tradi­tional academic disciplines are the only legitimate curriculum content; that they should be emphasized to the exclusion of other types of human learning and as­pects of human personality. They also suggest that an exclusively cognitive ori­entation casts the student in a passive role; that the issue of generalization is controversial; that what is accepted as a discipline at any point in history is the result of cultural and political forces; and that the curriculum itself "is a social artifact, conceived of and made for deliberate human purposes" (Good­son, 1989, p. 131 ). The historian Herbert Kliebard, noting their tenacity in cur­riculum, refers to the traditional school subjects as "the impregnable fortress" (1986, p. 269), while the philosopher Michael Scriven claims that the over­whelming majority of the traditional curriculum is either irrelevant or redun­dant (1975).

Curriculum Perspectives • 11

• • Missing in the emphasis on symbols of cultural literacy (memorized infor-mation) is the deeper rationale, implicit in the experientialist, for experi­encing the great mysteries and for the liberating power of great ideas. The great works' emancipatory power to free people from the intellectual fetters of their day seems to be lost by many proponents of cultural literacy in the acceptance of tradition for its own sake. . . . Students should continually return to the questions of what is moral action in each situation encoun­tered: What is right? What is good? What is worthwhile? This allows class­rooms and families really to become sites of moral action, places where people, adults and children alike, are immersed in the wholehearted quest for a moral life, a life lived within a community where shared values and individual values are honored, a life of cooperation, harmony with nature, improvement, and possibility. It allows people to search for a world that is more caring, more peaceful, more meaningful, more beautiful, and more fair, and it creates a space for people to act on behalf of that search. It should become the organizing center of the curriculum itself ... enabling and inspiring students to ask continuously: What is worthwhile? What is valuable to think about, study, do, be, and become?

William Ayecs & William H. Schubert (1989, p. 364)

Social transformation

•

Another influential group of scholars views the school as a potential agent for the reform of society. Many view the school, as presently constituted, as an agent rather than an opponent of class oppression. Jean Anyon suggests that schools teach lower-class students to follow rules, middle-class students to give "right" an­swers, professional-class students to be creative, and executive-class students to

manipulate the system (1980). Although not the first to advocate a socially ac­tivist role for the school, George S. Counts was for many years its best-known spokesperson. He summarized his beliefs in a book entitled Dare the School Build a New Social Order?, first published in 1932 (1969). This text and his other writings earned him a distinction shared by other great American writers such as Sinclair Lewis, Pearl Buck, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Carl Sandburg, Truman Capote, Arthur Miller, Robert Frost, John Kenneth Galbraith, Norman Mailer, and John Steinbeck-an FBI dossier as a potential subversive (Mitgang, 1988).

While popular in the days of the New Deal, such radical views fell into dis­favor after World War II, when the watchword became social adjustment rather than social transformation. But in the 1980s, the call for educators to play a role in the reform of society was made by several scholars. Educators, it was argued, must become advocates of those young people whose lives were increasingly blighted by poverty, malnutrition, homelessness, crime, violence, alienation, and

12 • 1 /Curriculum and Human Well~ Being

It would be difficult to dispel ignorance unless there is freedom to pursue the truth unfettered by fear. . Free men and women are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society.

Aung San Suu Kyi (Burma), Nobel Prize for Peace, 1991. (Kyi, 1991, pp.180-81, 183)

drug addiction (McLaren, 1988; Van Til, 1989). Any purpose less than "the cre­ation of a more loving, more just, saner world" (Purpel, 1989, p. x), it could be argued, is a trivialization of teachers' work (Apple, 1979; Giroux, 1983 ).

It is somewhat difficult in the Western world to find historical or contem­porary examples of schools leading social change. But if curriculum seems un­likely to spearhead social or political revolution, it can, as innumerable adults

• I

•

I am not against a curriculum or a program, but only against the authoritarian and elitist ways of organizing the studies [and] passive and silencing methods of transferring knowledge. . . . When I criticize manipulation, I do not want to fall into a false and nonexistent nondirectivity of education. For me, education is always directive, always. The question is to know towards what and which and whom is it directive. This is the question. I don't believe in self-liberation. Liberation is a social act. Liberating education is a social pro­cess of illumination.

Paulo Freire (Shor and Freire, 1987, pp. 21-23) I

Curriculum Perspectives • 13

attest, have an impact on individuals. The process of conscientization, a term coined by the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, aims to liberate people by making them aware of the political, cultural, historical, and social assumptions of their society. The German philosopher, )iirgen Habermas (1974) termed the purpose of such education "emancipatory action." This is to be achieved not by trans­mission of information, but by dialectic and collaborative inquiry by teachers and students (Freire, 1970).

~ . We know that our arguments will not convince many. We know that our fun­damental convictions that the only method of education is experiment, and its only criterion freedom, will sound to some like a trite commonplace, to some like an indistinct abstraction, to others again like a visionary dream.

Leo Tolstoy ( 1967, p. 31)

• • The primary curriculum goal is liberation-developing in students maximum

capacity for choice. Our liberation is incomplete as a result not only of social and economic constraints, prejudice, and discrimination. We are also oppressed insofar as we live with false information or incomplete understanding of ourselves and of the world. The education required to counter such oppression is not technocratic, but must in all its aspects be "consistent with values of human possibility and social justice" (Cornbleth, 1990, p. 198). It must have, in the words of Shirley Grundy, "a fundamental interest in emancipation and empowerment to engage in autonomous action arising out of authentic, critical insights into the social construction of hu­man society" (1987, p. 19). The ultimate educational purpose is

I the emergence of people who know who they are and are conscious of themselves as active and deciding beings, who bear responsibility for their choices and who are able to explain them in terms of their own freely adopted purposes and ideals. (Fay, 1987, p. 74)

Alan Webster, a New Zealand educator, has drawn a general outline of a cur­riculum for liberation. It would include the biology of liberation, which teaches the biological limits of consumption of energy and resources, since the future freedom of human beings depends on biological accounting. An ecology of liber­ation addresses the need to develop balance and interdependence in the ecosys­tem. A psychology of liberation is aimed at the maximization of personal competency. A sociology of liberation teaches the development of collective op­portunity. A philosophy of liberation maximizes intellectual and moral autonomy in terms of freedom of thought and freedom of action. And a politics of libera­tion aims at the maximization of human equality, freedom, opportunity, and di­versity. These various areas are seen as integrative rather than specialized. The purpose of all of them is to maximize understanding, anticipation, intention, and participation.

14 • 1 /Curriculum and Human Well~ Being

Liberation education must put the tools of liberation into the hands of the oppressed. Rather than saying, "Freedom comes out of the barrel of a gun!" it must be said, "Freedom comes from the ability to understand, to anticipate and to become actively involved in one's own liberation." (Webster, 1984, p. 32)

Individual fulfillment

A third orientation stresses the development of all aspects of the individual, as a means not so much to social change as to personal fulfillment or self-actualization. The roots of this approach are found in such sources as the romantic philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the psychology of Abraham Maslow, and the pedagogy of A. S. Neill. Sometimes called humanistic, this orientation views people as essentially good and motivated by their own need for growth. Education is not a process of fill­ing a vacuum or remediating a deficit, but of providing the conditions in which peo­ple can develop their full potential. The nurturance of self-concept is viewed as critical. It is seen as important to integrate the different aspects of being, including the social, the cognitive, the affective, the somatic, the aesthetic, and the spiritual. The primary vehicle for growth is human relations, and the preferred learning mode is direct personal experience (Pratt, 1986a).

The meanings of greatest interest to these thinkers are personal meanings. Personal meanings are so unique to each individual that they cannot be fully un­derstood by anyone else. An individual's self-concept or gender identity or aes­thetic responses-these are elements of personality that are subjectively lived and experienced rather than objectively articulated or formalized. The moment of illu­mination that may come to a child or adult while reading a work of literature is significant partly because it is often extraordinary and counter-cultural, estrang­ing and liberating "from the normal and the endlessly normalized" (Greene, 1990, p. 253).

Most subjective of all, and most difficult to render into the verbal formulas beloved of Western thought, are spiritual meanings: the ways in which individuals conceive of their place in the universe and interpret the fundamental meaning of their lives. In the absence of spiritual meaning, writes Webster, we suffer "spiritual estrangement, defined as feeling apart from or broken and distant from both one's own deeper spiritual self and from any greater spiritual entity" (1984, p. 16). Spir­ituality weaves those strands of human consciousness that provide a sense of per­sonal meaning, significance, harmony, or wonder. Perhaps because of a confusion in the minds of educators between spirituality and religion, such meanings are rarely addressed in school curricula.

But the consequences of an absence of a sense of personal meaning are all around us. Neurosis, alienation, false dependencies, meaningless delinquency and vandalism, violence, depression, suicide, and attempted suicide are often responses to a felt absence of personal meaning. Suicide rates have risen, especially among teenage males, to the point at which, in North America, they are now approxi· mately twice as high as for the same group in Japan.

Curriculum Perspectives • 15

Suicide Rates in 1986 per 100,000 Persons in Selected Countries for Males Aged 15-24

Japan

Sweden

United States

Canada

(World Health Organization, 1990)

11.6

19.5

21.4

26.9

Personal meanings are unlikely to be developed by purely cognitive teaching. They tend to rest on significant life experiences. If you reflect on the deepest meanings in your life and explore their origins, you will find that significant ex­periences, whether joyful or traumatic, played an important part in their forma­tion. If we are interested in building in young people a sense of personal meaning in their lives, then we will need to plan curricula that make provision for signifi­cant experiences that allow students to grow as human beings. I am not thinking of courses in The Meaning of Life, but rather of teachers who would continually ask: Given this cognitively based curriculum, how can I use it to foster students' sense of personal meaning? What implications does it have for development of learners' self-concept and sense of identity? What significant experiences can I provide in the course of this program? How can I teach this subject in such a way as to enhance my clients' lives as social beings? This is what John Dewey recom­mended long ago: the teaching of all subjects so as to realize their social and per­sonal potential (1902). To explore such questions is to find rich new possibilities even in conventional curricula. Mathematics, Welles Foshay argues, with its amazing intuitive and imaginative leaps, provides an opportunity for wonder and astonishment that can properly be described in terms of spiritual experience (1991). All of the sciences provide numerous possibilities for students to consider deeper meanings. Current thinking, for example, on the origin of the universe suggests that it consists of still-expanding debris from a primal explosion that took place some twenty billion years ago. Within the first second after the Big Bang, an immensely hot and dense fireball was formed, and all matter in today 's universe is constituted from that first star. That includes all of the atoms that make up each of our bodies (Hawking, 1988). We are all star children! Learning for mastery is valuable for public meanings. For personal meanings, we need learning for mystery.

Humanistic educators focus not only on the personal, but also on the inter­personal. Paulo Freire opens one of his books with the words, "To be human is to

engage in relationships with others and with the world" (1976, p. 3 ). The crucial importance of relationships to people's happiness, some would argue, makes it critical that schools assist their clients in developing the capacity to engage in enriching and nonexploitive relationships. As Mary Catherine Bateson writes, "In this society, we habitually underestimate th~ impulse in men, women, and

16 • 1 /Curriculum and Human Well-Being

even children to care for one another and their need to be taken care of" (1989, p. 140).

Like personal meanings, social meanings cannot be taught by cognitive means. Rather, they are developed as a result of what Martin Buber called "!­Thou" experiences (1970). Social meanings are crucial to people's happiness, par· ticularly to that of young people. Aristotle recognized this more than two millennia ago, devoting more space to friendship than to any other topic (White, 1990). Adolescents, for whom friendship is primary, would likely agree with the words that Francis Bacon penned almost four centuries ago:

It is a meere, and miserable Solitude, to want true Frends; without which the World is but a Wildernesse .... No Receipt openeth the Heart, but a true Frend; To whom you may impart, Griefes, Joyes, Feares, Hopes, Suspicions, Counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the Heart, to oppresse it. (Bacon, 1985, p. 81)

The inclination and ability to make friends and to nurture friendship is, surely, more significant to an individual's future well-being than most of the cognitions we teach in school. Many people lack such abilities; in fact, "communication apprehen· siveness" is more common in classrooms than all other handicaps combined (Hurt, Scott, & McCroskey, 1978). Making friends early in'schooling, on the other hand, is a good predictor of positive attitudes toward school and gains in learning (Ladd, 1990). Shy children, by hesitating to become involved with others, may miss the experiences that are important in the development of social competence. Lacking this competence, they become "self-handicapped," withdraw still further, and are further excluded by peers. This pattern frequently becomes a lifelong condition, re­sulting in passivity and social isolation (Caspi, Elder, & Bem, 1988, p. 825).

The ability to function effectively and happily in relation to others, is, as it happens, also an important vocational attribute. Over 60 percent of job termina· tions are the result of a breakdown in personal relations. In surveys of business and industry, employers rate the importance of social skills and attitudes much higher than academic knowledge and skills (Frost, 1974).

~ . Shyness is an insidious personal problem that is reaching such epidemic pro· portions as to be justifiably called a social disease. Trends in our society sug· gest it will get worse in the coming years as social forces increase our isolation, competition, and loneliness. Unless we begin to do something soon, many of our children and grandchildren will become prisoners of their own shyness. To prevent this, we must begin to understand what shyness is, so that we can provide a supportive environment where shy people can shed the secu· rity of their private prisons and regain their lost freedoms of speech, of action, and of human asssociations.

Philip Zimbardo (1977, p. 16)

•

Curriculum Perspectives • 17

This is not to suggest that the primary rationale for social meanings is utili­tarian. Social meanings include such qualities as empathy and compassion. Many people would argue that we need to develop such characteristics in individuals if the next generation is to be able to contribute toward the solution of such world­wide problems as social injustice, the degradation of the environment, or imbal­ances in the distribution of food and wealth. Perhaps more importantly, we need these characteristics in order to lead, and to help others lead, lives that are joyful and fulfilling.

The humanistic orientation is criticized by academic rationalists as self­indulgent and undisciplined. Even friendly critics have pointed to the tendency of the humanists to become smug, anti-intellectual, and utopian (Farson, 1978). Critical theorists accuse humanistic educators of being naive and apolitical and of producing false consciousness. By aiming to make the classroom a place of joy and happiness, Henry Giroux claims, humanistic educators "in many cases un­wittingly end up humanizing the very social and political forces they initially attempt to eliminate" (1981, p. 66).

Feminist pedagogy

The contributions of feminist thought to curriculum theory and practice are diverse, profound, and as yet neglected and underestimated by the wider educa­tional community. It would be presumptuous to attempt a definitive description of this school of thought. Although feminist thinkers are united by a common inter­est, there is no single strand of feminist thinking. Liberal feminists differ in im­portant respects from socialist feminists, who in turn are distinct from Marxist feminists. Furthermore, feminist thought is developing so rapidly that any descrip­tion of the state of the art can be only temporary.

Feminist pedagogy is rooted in a feminist epistemology. Ever since Plato and Aristotle, it has been widely assumed, at least in Western cultures, that natural and human phenomena and events can be best understood by objective, analytical study. In such an epistemology, a knowing subject focuses upon an external object, uninfluenced by emotions, politics, or relationships. True knowing is viewed ide­ally as detached, dispassionate, and rational, an entirely abstract function of the mind. The mind, in turn, is sharply distinguished from the body or the emotions. Moral and ethical decisions are to be made in the same way as scientific judg­ments: by the application of general principles or rules to particular cases. These beliefs result in a view of the self "as autonomous, individualistic, self-interested, fundamentally isolated from other people and from nature"; of community "as a collection of similarly autonomous, isolated, self-interested individuals having no intrinsically fundamental relations with one another"; and of nature as "an au­tonomous system from which the self is fundamentally separated and which must be dominated to alleviate the threat of the self's being controlled by it" (Harding, 1986, p. 171). This long, rationalist tradition in Western philosophy reached its high point in the late nineteenth century, after which it came under increasing attack in philosophical circles. Rationalism, or positivism, however, continues to

18 • 1/ Curriculum and Human Well; Being

dominate the curricula of schools or universities, with their emphasis on scientific analysis and objective knowledge.

Feminist writers take issue with this dominant paradigm at many points. Madeleine Grumet (1988) has pointed out that Plato's elevation of ideas, which are eternal, over matter, which is transitory, inevitably devalues the physical, re­productive, domestic, and relational world. The abstract conceptual mode, Mar­garet Andersen (1986) argues, has more appeal to men than to women, and the prevailing abstract models used in the sciences and the social sciences are alien to women's experience. Curricula based on mainstream philosophical assumptions consequently "obliterate all that is personal in favor of whatever is general, all that is actual in deference to what is hypothetical, all that is moving in deference to all that is still" (Grumet, 1988, p. 173).

It is a concern of feminist writers on these issues that the limitations of tra­ditional epistemology are disproportionately damaging to women. Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986), comment that "the care of children, or maternal practice, gives rise to maternal thought and particular modes of relat­ing to the world" (p. 189). As Daphne Morris (personal communication, May 1991) puts it, "Women are, in many ways, their bodies, ... reminded with reg-ularity that control is neither possible, nor desirable .... And, at childbirth, the body and experience render one humble: in touch with, and in awe of na­ture." The modes of thought and action experienced by women, in contrast to those typical of men, are process- rather than goal-oriented, intuitive rather than rational, related rather than discrete, collaborative rather than solitary, co­operative rather than competitive, supportive rather than challenging, personal

•

Curriculum Perspectives • 19

rather than impersonal, responsible rather than self-concerned (Belenky eta!., 1986). "Objectivity is construed as truthfulness or fidelity to situated subjects, not as disinterest, separation or aloofness" (Noddings, 1992, p. 675). Failure to recognize a different reality, and failure to create harmony and synthesis among different realities, produces what Grumet calls a "crippling dichotomy of inter­nal and external, dream and reality, body and thought, poetry and science, am­biguity and certainty" (Grumet, 1988, p. 155).

A feminine epistemology is matched by a feminine ethic. Traditional male ethics emphasize justice, based on an impartial application of rules. Carol Gilligan proposes an ethic of care, which views moral problems in contextual and relational terms: "While an ethic of justice proceeds from the premise of equality-that ev­eryone should be treated the same-an ethic of care rests on the premise of nonvio­lence-that no one should be hurt" (1982, p. 174). Ethical theory is inadequate, Nel Noddings argues, unless the caring relation is viewed as ethically basic: "I am not naturally alone. I am naturally in a relation from which I derive nourishment and guidance .... My very individuality is defined in a set of relations. This is my basic reality" (1984, p. 51). While traditional, rule-driven ethics views moral acts as those that are performed out of duty, in conformity with principle, "an ethic of caring prefers acts done out of love and natural inclination" (1988, p. 219).

Recent feminist writers have suggested that the aim of replacing traditional male-dominated epistemology and ethics with feminine alternatives is insuffi­cient, because it alters the priorities between the two positions while leaving the basic dichotomy intact:

Many contemporary feminists ... specifically advocate the adoption of a feminist epistemology, arguing that this contextual "feminine" un­derstanding is superior to the abstract, rationalist "masculine" model. This position is anathema to a postmodern feminism for a number of rea­sons. Most significantly ... their argument leaves the dichotomy that defines that inferiority intact .... If ... we replace our dualistic, hi­erarchical epistemology with another one that is also based on the privi­leging of a particular set of concepts, in this case, the feminine, the result will be, once more, dualism and hierarchy. (Hekman, 1990. pp. 16, 161)

A number of feminist writers have advocated a view of humanity that embraces both what is traditionally feminine and what is traditionally masculine.

Emotions are neither more basic than observation, reason, or action in building theory, nor are they secondary to them. Each of these human faculties reflects an aspect of human knowing inseparable from the other aspects. . . . The development of each of these faculties is a nec­essary condition for the development of all. ()aggar, 1989, p. 165)

Ehrenreich and English call for "a synthesis which transcends both the rational­ist and romanticist poles" (1979, p. 324 ). To avoid the continuation of stereotyping

20 • 1/ Curriculum and Human Well, Being

and exploitation of women, "an ethic of care should apply equally to men and women" (Erdman, 1990, p. 177).

What is the significance of these ideas and arguments for curriculum? First, they challenge the very basis on which curricula have traditionally been con­structed, whereby "the experience, viewpoint, and goals of white, Western, elite males are taken as representing all of human experience" (Maher, 1987, p. 91), and "educational methods are determined by what works with males" (Martin, 1985, p. 22). Every academic discipline, together with its hidden curriculum, its form of inquiry, structures, and research base, becomes subject to new scrutiny. Jane Roland Martin uses examples of history curricula that exclude women from their narratives; psychology that generalizes about human beings on the basis of research with males; science curricula that employ a detached objectivity reflect· ing the cultural image of masculinity; philosophy that uses violent metaphors of dissecting or attacking an argument (1985). Phyllis Teitelbaum points to the hidden androcentrism of testing procedures that attempt to be value free, that separate knowledge into atomistic particles, that emphasize right-or-wrong di­chotomies, that prefer what is quantitative to what is qualitative, and that reward individualism rather than collaboration (1989).

Next, they challenge schools to question the appropriateness-for both males and females-of curricula that emphasize only a narrowly construed model of intellectual development. Curricula need to change in the direction of "ecological and environmental integratedness of intellectual, affective, and physi· cal domains" (McDade, 1987, p. 61). Instructional arrangements are needed in which students

can resist the compulsion to become.part of the dehumanizing forces of competition, elitism, and self-aggrandisement encouraged by patriarchal systems of education, and choose instead to reflect the different kinds of power and strength that exist-for instance, women's strong capacity to care for others-a quality often buried, diffused, misdirected or incorpo­rated under patriarchy, but which redefined, contains the energy to in turn redefine human relationships. (Thompson, 1983, p. !58)

Intrinsic to the thinking of these writers is the idea that education is a dyadic, not a transmissive, process. As such, curriculum must be responsive to actual stu· dents, constantly attentive to their needs (Tronto, 1989), and willing to change as they change:

Curriculum is a moving form. . . . Considered apart from its appro· priation and transformation by students, curriculum defined as design, a structure of knowledge, an intended learning outcome, or a learning environment, is merely a static form. . . . It is a curriculum that con· trols through mystification, encouraging placid passivity. (Grumer, 1988,

pp. 171-72)

Curriculum Perspectives • 21

• • Feminist pedagogy begins with a vision of . the classroom as a liberatory environment in which we, teacher-student and student-teacher, act as sub­jects, not objects, . . . a classroom characterized as persons connected in a net of relationships with people who care about each other's learning as well as their own .... Feminist pedagogy strives to help student and teacher learn to think in new ways, especially ways that enhance the integrity and wholeness of the person and the person's connections with others .... Empowering peda­gogy does not dissolve the authority or the power of the instructor. It does move from power as domination to power as creative energy.

Carolyn Shrewsbury (1987, pp. 6-7} . -~

The emphasis on the overriding importance of relationships is one that most teachers, it would be hoped, could support. Noddings writes:

I do not need to establish a deep, lasting, time-consuming personal rela­tionship with every student. What I must do is to be totally and nonse­lectively present to the student-to each student-as he addresses me. The time interval may be brief but the encounter is total. (Noddings,

1984, p. 180)

None of this is to suggest that interest in such qualities as caring is a monopoly either of feminists or of women, for to do so would be to stereotype both women and men.

What feminist pedagogy offers is not simply a curriculum that meets more justly the needs of women, but a curriculum that reflects more fully the nature of humanity. Until the curriculum gives place to the emotions, to intuition, to phys­ical being, and to caring, it will remain inadequate for men as well as for women. A feminist ethic proposes instructional structures that are less hierarchical, less didactic, and less abstract. To adopt this project is to move towards an education that mitigates the separation between mind and body, theory and experience, the public and the private, the individual and the relational. Such an education holds promise for healing and liberation for both men and women.

• The Significance of Orientation •

The four orientations outlined above are not mutually exclusive. All see edu­cation as a potentially powerful means to desired ends. All are motivated by the desire for the well-being of the student and of society, but they have different vi­sions of that well-being and of how it is to be achieved. Most educators do not fall neatly into one of the sharply defined categories. People are more various than that, more unexpected, inconsistent, idiosyncratic, and interesting. Most teachers

22 • I /Curriculum and Human Well~ Being

share some of the concepts of each orientation, as well as of value systems other than the four described. Philip Jackson puts it this way:

I Few, if any people, living or dead, turn out to be occupants of these ab­stract positions, and for good reason, which is that the positions as usu­ally presented are insufficiently contextualized and situated. In a word, they are too academic. (Jackson, 1992, p. 18)

Practicing educators tend to conform to Joseph Schwab's injunction to be eclectic rather than doctrinaire (1969). Or, as a friend puts it, "Tao is realized ... in the unity of these orientations. A year can be divided into four seasons and the four seasons make up a year" (Yang Chang, personal communication, September 1992).

It is the daily experience of the professional educator to become so enmeshed in the activities of teaching or administration as to lose sight of long-term goals. In this context, it is helpful now and again to reflect on basic goals and values, to examine our practice for its alignment with those ultimate intents, and, as the late James B. Macdonald urged, to clarify and profess our "grounding values of good­ness" (1977, p. 21).

The examples of curriculum orientations described above do not exhaust the possible perspectives on curriculum. They are intended to suggest that as curricu­lum planners we should begin much further back than by asking such questions as: How can we incorporate whole language principles into the primary class­room? or, What new content is needed in the physics curriculum? or, Which nov­els will we use this year in the literature program? To begin with such questions is to run the risk of reducing curriculum planning to a technical and organizational exercise. Although it uses some technical procedures, curriculum planning is es­sentially not technical but philosophical. It is primarily concerned with values and priorities. However, even if we do begin the curriculum process with a particular discipline or content area, questions of orientation can still provide valuable in­sight: Given this novel, this century, this regional study, this scientific experi­ment, this foreign language-what are the crucial intellectual learnings to be derived? What political insights does the curriculum make possible? How can I structure the learning situation so as to enhance students' relational lives? What are the possibilities within this curriculum for memorable experiences and for growth of students as persons? Deliberation on such questions might be consid-

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